OK KZT: What's wrong with AAC?

Star Knight wrote:@Galactic Sapper

Good lord no. They are not even remotely comparable. Eighth Fleet was being used for targeted raids chosen specifically to shape the political climate to influence Haven's political decisions. Sixth Fleet was straight combat ops to take territory with a strategic goal of taking a specific territory.

The objective of the Cutworm raids was to influence the allocation of Haven naval forces, not politics. They were delaying operations, designed to keep the Republic’s Navy off balance to make it more difficult for them to mount decisive offensive operations.

We’re are talking about a delay of mere months to get Apollo ready and (if it works) win the war with Haven. There’s nothing happening with regards to the League that would have been influenced in any conceivable way by delaying the attack on Lovat.

Star Knight wrote:The objective of the Cutworm raids was to influence the allocation of Haven naval forces, not politics. They were delaying operations, designed to keep the Republic’s Navy off balance to make it more difficult for them to mount decisive offensive operations.

Sanskrit was delayed because of the peace talk imitative at one point but again, this doesn’t magically shift planning and command authority from the First Space Lord to a civilian cabinet member outside the chain of command.

The reasonable decision would have been to follow the established process.

There’s the First Space Lord responsible for overall strategic direction. That’s Caparelli deciding how the Navy conducts defensive operations. Not Hamish, not the Crown. If they don’t like what he’s doing the Crown can ask for his resignation. Until then it’s his war to run.

Actual operational and tactical planning is the responsibility of the Second Space Lord heading the Bureau of Planning and the Strategy Board. That’s Givens deciding on what target Eighth Fleet is going to hit. Not Honors Chief of Staff. Givens planning groups may or may not ask for Eighth Fleets input, but the overall decision very much rests with the Admiralty, not the fleet commander. Eighth Fleets job is then to figure out how to attack the chosen target. Nothing more, nothing less.

Now of course, communication lag is a thing in the Honorverse so task force commanders may find themselves isolated and forced to make far reaching strategic decisions way outside their own immediate are of responsibility. This is very much not the case here though.

I’m not ignoring the situation with the League. I just don’t think this situation should have any impact on the decision to mount the operation against Lovat and the rationale presented by White Haven in the fateful meeting with the Queen makes any sense.

We’re are talking about a delay of mere months to get Apollo ready and (if it works) win the war with Haven.

What would have been lost by waiting another couple of months, hitting them with four or five Apollo BatRons at Lovat and after that successful demonstration, immediately go on to attack Haven itself?

But Cutworm was attempting to influence the allocation of Haven naval force through manipulating Haven's political climate. Manticore was deliberately identifying target systems that had outsized domestic political clout relative to their military value. That way the targeted systems, and systems like them, would use their pull within the Haven government to force dispersion of a fair chunk of the modern RHN fleet in defensive penny packets. (Despite the Haven navy knowing that was the wrong use of those forces)

If by "mere months" you mean at least 14 months.
Operation Thunderbolt was in 1920 PD and only a trickle of Keyhole II equipped Apollo capable ships had come out by the Battle of Manticore on July 24, 1921 PD. Hardly any more were available until the Python lump completed, which was only shortly before the February 26 1922 PD Oyster Bay attack. (Though they had enough of the Apollo missile pods available by early Feb to use them in light-speed controlled mode at the Battle of Spindle)
[…]

...by using rear area raids in politically sensitive systems. Getting inside the Haven political system was one of the main factors for picking targets.

The raid was not planned at the cabinet meeting. The timing for it was chosen, which was properly a political decision to be made.

You're ignoring multiple examples in the book where Harrington is shown to be consulting with Caparelli over operational planning, or recounting the results of consultations to someone else. Including for the early planning stages of Sanskrit. They largely were following the usual procedures, with the only real difference being that Harrington and her staff were available for in-person consultations any time they wanted, which offloaded some of the planning duties onto her staff rather than solely being the war college. At no point was she doing operations that hadn't been specifically approved by the admiralty - Caparelli, not White Haven.

The briefing for Sanskrit II was conducted by Caparelli, not White Haven, even though White Haven was present for it.

In short, you're massively inflating a trivial or entirely non-issue.

"Not one word," Elizabeth Winton said flatly. "Not one word about why they might have done it, or who else might have wanted to do it."
Her Prime Minister and his Cabinet sat silently as she surveyed them with eyes of frozen brown ice.

[…] NOTE 1: Cabinet meeting, no one from the Admiralty is present except White Haven. This body is not qualified to make operational decisions.

CONTINUED

I suppose," William Alexander said heavily, "that the real question before us isn't whether or not we hold the Peeps responsible for their actions, but what we do about it.
"Hamish," he turned to his brother, "what are our military options?"
"Essentially what they were before Pritchart's invitation," Hamish replied. "One thing that's changed is that Eighth Fleet's had longer to receive munitions and train with them. We've got a few new wrinkles we think are going to make our ships considerably more effective, and the additional training time will stand Eighth Fleet in good stead.

[…] NOTE 2: The PM asks about military options. Perfectly legitimate. White Haven blows it. As explained in excruciating detail multiple times, the delay changed the strategic picture drastically. Manticore had the option to run down the clock until Apollo was deployed in sufficient numbers which would have been the case in late August. The meeting is in April. White Haven fails to realize this. Contrast this with Caparllis forethought as displayed prior to Buttercup.

CONTINUED

The Queen “But Eighth Fleet could resume active operations immediately?"
"Yes," Hamish said firmly, trying to ignore the icy shiver which went through him at the thought of Honor going back into combat when he'd allowed himself to hope so hard for a diplomatic solution. And trying not to think about her bitter disappointment—and Emily's—if she found herself unable to be there for their daughter's birth after all.
"And what does our defensive posture look like?"
"That, too, is essentially what it was, but there are improvements on the horizon. We're pressing ahead with the system defense version of Apollo, and we ought to be able to begin deploying it very soon. We're still looking at some production bottlenecks, but once we get the system-defense pods deployed in numbers, we'll have much greater security at home.

[…] NOTE 3: The issue of a married couple in the same chain of command rears its head. Hamish's’ first and main concern is the well being of his wife. Understandable, but also the reason why he shouldn’t be making any military decisions regarding her. Again, nepotism sucks. Also again, while White Haven is very much aware of what's in the pipeline, he fails to recognize the strategic change the widespread deployment of Apollo entails. According to his own words, the strategic picture is unchanged. This is very much not the case.

CONTINUED

"But what I seem to hear you saying," Grantville said intently, "is that whatever the League ultimately does, nothing it can do in the next, say, six months is going to have a significant impact on us?"
"That time estimate's probably a bit optimistic, assuming we take any heavy losses against Haven," Hamish replied. "Overall, though, that's fairly accurate."

[…] NOTE 4: Nothing wrong with this analysis. In fact it’s overly pessimistic by the PM and White Haven just explained they are probably safe for two tyears at least. Just keep this in mind.

CONTINUED

"Nothing we can do will change that," Elizabeth said flatly. "We're building as quickly as we can; they're doing the same thing. The threat zone until the ships we've laid down can equalize the numbers is beyond our control . . . unless we can do something to whittle the Peeps down."
"You're thinking about Sanskrit," Hamish said, equally flatly.
Most of the people in the Cabinet Room had no idea what Sanskrit was. Grantville, Hamish, the Queen, and Sir Anthony Langtry did, and Elizabeth nodded.

[…] NOTE 5: We are fast approaching peak stupid. First, yes, the Cabinet is the wrong forum to make military decisions. Most of the people there have no idea what they are talking about. There are probably national security implications too, but let’s ignore that.
Whatever the Queen is talking about, it’s very much not in her job description to formulate strategy with the First Lord. At best, it’s her job to hear the strategic decision made by the Space Lords. She doesn’t even need to do that, he could just delegate this to her PM. LIKE IT WAS DONE DURING THE FIRST WAR.
And to make matters worse, she’s just wrong too. Sanskrit has no relevant impact on Havenite naval construction. Hamish fails to point this out.

CONTINUED

"You just said Eighth Fleet has the new weapons. If we use them, if we can convince the Peeps we've got more of them—that we've reequipped with them across the board—that's got to affect their strategic thinking. It may force them to do what we wanted all along and fritter away their wall of battle defending rear area systems. Or it may even convince them they've gotten their sums wrong and they don't have sufficient numbers to offset our individual superiority. In which case, the bastards may actually have to sit down and talk to us after all."
"It's possible," Hamish agreed. "I can't predict how probable it might be. A lot would depend on how their analysts evaluate the situation after they run into Mistletoe and Apollo. They might not draw the conclusions we'd expect them to, since they won't have the same information we have about the systems' capabilities and availability. And I don't think anyone at Admiralty House would be prepared to predict exactly what their military reaction might be."

[…] NOTE 6: Unfortunately for the Queen, Theisman has two working brain cells and figured out that the meaningless attack on Lovat indicates no widespread deployment of Apollo in just about two seconds.
Also unfortunately for the Queen, White Haven fails to a) remind her that it’s not her job to worry about strategy details, he has two Space Lords to do that, b) while the rest of the Cabinet may find all of this interesting, it doesn’t concern them and that c) when you don’t know what you enemy would do you err on the side of caution, play it safe when possible and not assume he’ll react like you want him to act.

Skipping ahead a bit since it’s just a repeat of what I already pointed out. The Queen goes on and on analyzing the military situation and drawing misleading conclusions while White Haven fails to remind her why there’s an Admiralty building downtown.

CONTINUED

"No." Hamish shook his head. "Hitting them hard with Sanskrit and Apollo will have to make them stop and think. And even if they wanted to counterattack immediately, it would take them weeks, at least, to plan, deploy for, and mount an attack heavy enough to break the defenses covering our critical star systems. Their losses would be massive, even against our existing defenses, and we've seen no evidence that Theisman is prepared to launch some sort of do-or-die kamikaze attack or throw his people's lives away on forlorn hopes. I'm not saying that that couldn't change, but, as Willie's suggested, there's still the time factor involved. We'd have at least a month, probably two, to get the system-defense Apollo pods into initial deployment, while he organized any attack in response to Sanskrit.

[…] NOTE 7: And this is probably the sticking point of White Havens failure. The aggressive fleet commander of the first war is completely fine with rolling the dice on Theisman not having a worst-case attack plan. Or Theisman being wrong. Or Theisman having a potentially game-changing tech of their own, luring him into action. Like say, Donkey.
The risk may have been relatively small in his mind, the potential consequences would be war-war-losing though and there is no reason not to play it safe. Manticore will have everything in place to win the war within just five to six months. All that needs to be done is to not reveal to Haven what will happen. White Haven seems completely oblivious to this and demonstrates next to no strategic forethought.

CONTINUED

"I'm not going to pretend that we aren't running a risk launching Sanskrit," he said. "But unless Theisman is prepared to lose literally hundreds of superdreadnoughts, there won't be a lot he can do even against the defenses we already have in position. Against the defenses we can have in place in another couple of months, his losses would be even higher. My own preference would be to wait at least another month to six weeks before we launch Sanskrit, just to give ourselves a little longer to get Apollo fully into production, bring at least a few more Apollo-capable wallers forward, and get the Apollo-capable system-defense pods into initial deployment. But if we're going to decide we can't wait that long because of the potential for an incident—or maybe I should say another incident—with the Sollies, then Sanskrit represents our best option."

[…] NOTE 8: And he almost got it. Unfortunately what needs to happen will happen and we reach peak stupid. While he recognizes the value in waiting a little bit longer after a fashion, they won’t for utterly absurd reasons.

As established before by White Haven HIMSELF and pointed out in Note 4, the League is a non entity for the immideate future. Nothing they can do will change the strategic picture against Haven. Manticore can absolutely afford to wait to get Apollo deployed in overwhelming numbers and attack the Haven system in October 1921.

But you see, White Haven wasn’t even willing to wait SIX WEEKS for no reason whatsoever. Nothing, absolutely nothing the League could do would justify this reasoning. It’s completley and utterly false.
And no, Sanskrit is not your best option. Sanskrit is an ineffectual operation in light of the potential of total victory seven tmonths from now!
It’s clear as day that White Haven still thinks as a fleet commander.

CONTINUED

The Queen turned back to Hamish.
"Hamish, I want orders cut to Eighth Fleet immediately. Operation Sanskrit is reactivated, as of now. I want active planning to begin immediately, and I want Sanskrit to hit the Peeps as soon as physically possible."
The smile she produced was one a hexapuma might have worn.
"We'll give them their formal notice," she said grimly, "and I hope the bastards choke on it!"

Are we, though? 8th fleet gets the Andermani wallers which are Apollo capable, but after them the well is pretty dry for up to a year. There might be a few more Andermani on the way but there won't be any new Apollo capable RMN ships for nearly a year. The Graysons might have a few on the way, but all the existing ships and those too late in construction to be converted easily are not capable of using Apollo, and the length of time needed to convert existing ships was discussed and dismissed as too dangerous until the new construction started joining the fleet.

Even the system defense Apollo pods weren't going to be as much of a bonus as they could have been, since they don't have anything capable of fully controlling them. An 8x increase in controllable missiles using light speed links is certainly an improvement, as is Apollo operating in autonomous mode, but neither are anywhere close to effective as using Keyhole II to control it -- and Manticore didn't have the Keyhole platforms to do it.

You mean a year or more, with Haven picking off any system they like (other than Yeltsin and maybe Trevor's Star) before Manticore would have enough ships to do anything of the sort? What she had at BoM is all she was going to have for quite some time.

Star Knight wrote:And? It’s still just military strategy. The Space Lords and associated planning groups are perfectly capable to identify relevant targets. There’s no reason whatsoever to get the First Lord involved (why on earth should he have any crucial input anyway??) in strategic planning or hand off target selection to some random Captain on the List assigned as Chief of Staff to a Task Group Commander.

But it’s not about the Cutworm raids. There’s nothing wrong about them, except White Havens conduct.

It’s about what happened when the talks collapsed after the Torch business and they just reactivated Sanskrit and revealed Apollo prematurely. The decision to do so was made in April 1921 when Haven had already demonstrated (by attacking Zanzibar) that they were not willing to go for a deciding blow yet.
In April of 1921 Apollo obviously was already in initial deployment and a lot as coming down the pipeline in late summer of 1921.

Caparelli states in SftS when he is meeting Gold Peak before the Battle of Lovat that ‘the first wave of our emergency superdreadnought construction programs will be commissioning over the next several months’.

And in AAC, about a month before BoMa Caparelli informs Harrington that ‘that somewhere between twenty-five and forty additional [IAN] pod-layers, all refitted to handle the Keyhole II platforms and the flat-pack pods, are going to be coming forward over the next month and a half or so’

Also in their final staff meeting just before BoMa Yanakov says that they were looking at fifty Apollo capable ships for the upcoming attack on Jouett a month from now.

And in the fateful meeting with the Queen, White Haven even says they probably should delay Sanskrits reactivation for a couple of weeks to get more Apollo systems deployed, including system defense pods. But they won't do that because somehow an incident with the Sollies could change the strategic situation and the Queen really doesn’t want to wait to kick Havenite ass.

The bottom line, Manticore was set for getting Apollo deployed in overwhelming numbers by fall of 1921 while they would have been safe against a decisive Havenite attack by August 1921. The decision to reactivate Sanskrit was made in late April 1921.
This means they only need to hang on another four to five months. From a point when they were very much not shooting at each other no less!

All they needed to do was a) tell the mad Queen, no we’re are not attacking them yet, because if we can delay active operations for another couple of months all will be well or failing to do that b) not reveal Apollo at Lovat but do whatever else to satisfy the Queen

And this didn’t happen because White Haven – still thinking as an overly aggressive fleet commander – jumped at the chance of hitting Haven again and reactivated a months old, strategically outdated battle plan without even checking in with his Space Lords.

Attacking political targets really deserves to be discussed with the political leaders. And moreover, they probably involved White Haven because he's Admiral White Haven, liberator of Trevor's Star with Third Fleet and the hero of Operation Buttercup, not because he's the First Lord. He's no slouch at tactics.

The problem is that non-Apollo Sanskrit/Cutworm simply couldn't work any more, as the Battle of Solon prior to the Torch talks proved. The RHN had enough ships (and more coming online) and Foraker was coming with sufficient new goodies to effectively defend those rear area systems. It was doing what Manticore had intended: prevent amassing of sufficient RHN force to attack primary targets in the Alliance. But the cost of continuing those attacks would be too great.

As others have pointed out, unlike during the pre-Buttercup era, the Alliance had to keep pressure on Haven. Doing nothing and yielding the strategic initiative completely to Haven was not acceptable. The same way that the Alliance was hitting political targets to force the Havenite government's hands, Haven was hitting political targets in the Alliance. And being on the receiving end of Operation Buttercup sould have made them paranoid enough of leaving the Manties alone to their R&D for an extended period.

Star Knight wrote:

If by "mere months" you mean at least 14 months.
Operation Thunderbolt was in 1920 PD and only a trickle of Keyhole II equipped Apollo capable ships had come out by the Battle of Manticore on July 24, 1921 PD. Hardly any more were available until the Python lump completed, which was only shortly before the February 26 1922 PD Oyster Bay attack. (Though they had enough of the Apollo missile pods available by early Feb to use them in light-speed controlled mode at the Battle of Spindle)
[…]

But it’s not about the Cutworm raids. There’s nothing wrong about them, except White Havens conduct.

It’s about what happened when the talks collapsed after the Torch business and they just reactivated Sanskrit and revealed Apollo prematurely. The decision to do so was made in April 1921 when Haven had already demonstrated (by attacking Zanzibar) that they were not willing to go for a deciding blow yet.
In April of 1921 Apollo obviously was already in initial deployment and a lot as coming down the pipeline in late summer of 1921.

Caparelli states in SftS when he is meeting Gold Peak before the Battle of Lovat that ‘the first wave of our emergency superdreadnought construction programs will be commissioning over the next several months’.

And in AAC, about a month before BoMa Caparelli informs Harrington that ‘that somewhere between twenty-five and forty additional [IAN] pod-layers, all refitted to handle the Keyhole II platforms and the flat-pack pods, are going to be coming forward over the next month and a half or so’

Also in their final staff meeting just before BoMa Yanakov says that they were looking at fifty Apollo capable ships for the upcoming attack on Jouett a month from now.

And in the fateful meeting with the Queen, White Haven even says they probably should delay Sanskrits reactivation for a couple of weeks to get more Apollo systems deployed, including system defense pods. But they won't do that because somehow an incident with the Sollies could change the strategic situation and the Queen really doesn’t want to wait to kick Havenite ass.

The bottom line, Manticore was set for getting Apollo deployed in overwhelming numbers by fall of 1921 while they would have been safe against a decisive Havenite attack by August 1921. The decision to reactivate Sanskrit was made in late April 1921.
This means they only need to hang on another four to five months. From a point when they were very much not shooting at each other no less!

All they needed to do was a) tell the mad Queen, no we’re are not attacking them yet, because if we can delay active operations for another couple of months all will be well or failing to do that b) not reveal Apollo at Lovat but do whatever else to satisfy the Queen

And this didn’t happen because White Haven – still thinking as an overly aggressive fleet commander – jumped at the chance of hitting Haven again and reactivated a months old, strategically outdated battle plan without even checking in with his Space Lords.